Dinner A La Graham

Last night, Graham's friend from Western Culinary Institute, Alex, came over for dinner. He and Graham will be opening their first restaurant in the next couple of years together. Alex has been traveling a lot since they graduated, he spent a few month in Europe staging (working for free) at various place and with some well known Chefs. Most recently he worked at Thomas Keller's Bouchon in Vegas, and is now headed off to work for the summer at The Laundry in the Hamptons.

For dinner, we started with Spring Vegetable Bruschetta, with spring onions, fava beans, asparagus tips and artichoke hearts. Next was an Artichoke and Potato Soup. This soup was so great, it really captured the essence and flavor of artichokes and the potatoes took in the flavor as well so you felt like you were eating pieces of artichoke heart. We paired the Belle Pente 2006 Cuvée Contraire with both of the first courses and it went quite well with the artichoke. I have heard that it is hard to pair wine with artichoke, but I have never come across that experience myself. Graham then added an impromptu course of homemade Italian Sausages for himself and Alex. The final course was a Short Rib Ravioli for the boys and a Oyster Mushroom Tortellini for myself. Both pasta dishes were finished in a Cranberry Bean Ragu. The Short Rib filling for the Ravioli came from a Ragu that Graham made last Tuesday for dinner when Granny Nanny came to stay and let Mommy & Daddy go see a movie. He had braised the short rib and made the sauce for the pasta, he then took the left over sauce from that meal and created a new filling for last night. I goes to show how much you can get out of one piece of meat and how many applications there are that many people don't use themselves! With the last course/s of the meal we had a Maresh 2005 Pinot Noir from the Red Hills Vineyard. It is actually produced and bottled by Archery Summit and was quite tasty and not nearly has overpowering as Archery Summit's own wines.

All in all it was a great night. After Graham got back from taking Alex home, we finished off the night with a TERRIBLE movie, its only saving grace, Christopher Walken, Balls of Fury.